[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:08] Welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy. This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:44] Well, good morning again as the kids head out and off to their class. Just a reminder that this is your class, right? And I know lunch is coming. We don't serve snacks in this class. I apologize, but I will try not to keep you too terribly long. We are continuing on a teaching series that we started a few weeks back, actually, with our MLK Sunday called Prophetic Imagination. We're sort of asking the question, what is it that characterizes prophets throughout scripture, Hebrew Scripture, and Christian scripture in the New Testament?
[00:01:22] Last week, Claire chatted with you a bit about how John the Baptist in Christian scripture is sort of the classic Hebrew prophet. And she did a great job of showing how John the Baptist comes in from the wilderness and brings a deeply uncomfortable, disconcerting message. He challenges all of their social norms. And Claire said, among other things, that this is sort of what characterizes prophets. Prophetic voices tend to come from the marginalized portions of our society, of our world, and they often say things that are deeply disturbing and unsettling. They challenge our normal ways of thinking and being in the world. And that, I think, is something that we're going to see is true as we go back into Hebrew scripture and visit some of these passages of prophets. We're going to do that today. We're going to take a look, actually at the greatest prophet in Judaism. But before we do, would you just say a brief prayer with me? God, we thank you for today. We thank you for this opportunity for us to gather and to lift our voices in prayer and song, to give our ears to you as we hear the text, to give our hearts to you and ask that you would say something fresh to us, say something new to us, say something prophetic to us in this challenging time.
[00:02:57] We pray that you would remind us of all that we have to lean on and lean into. As a community who follows the teachings of Christ, we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:03:11] The story of Charles Etta reminded me of a story that many of you have heard. And so I apologize if you've heard this before. But for several years I worked for a local nonprofit. And working for that local nonprofit, I would visit the service center here in Oceanside where there are a number of volunteers who worked in the food program in that nonprofit. And one of those volunteers was an older black woman named Lillian. And I came to love Lillian very quickly because she just never ceased to give me a hard time. I was like, you know, she was, like, the volunteer, and I was the staffer who came from, like, the central office. And she always would always give me a hard time. And then I would sit down and talk to her, and she would tell me about, you know, what we weren't doing right and, you know, how the organization should be making different kinds of decisions. And I'd take notes, and I'd report back to the executive director. But I just got to love Lillian because she was not afraid to speak the truth, no matter what. And she worked her entire career in the public school system. She was a teacher for Oceanside Unified School District, and then later served actually on the board for Oceanside Unified School District. And she's a member of a historic black church on the east side, which is the neighborhood where Charlesta, you just heard from Linda, felt pressured to move to. And the east side is sometimes called Pozole, and it is a Hispanic neighborhood, by and large, but there are three historic black congregations in that neighborhood. And it's called east side because Oceanside used to be this area right here, and it was literally the neighborhood on the other side of the train tracks. And so it was the east side of Oceanside at that time. Now, Oceanside is big, and east side is, like, on the west. Right? So I know it's confusing. The point is, that's where we stuck all the black and brown people.
[00:04:57] That's why it's called east side. That's why they're historically there. And Lillian lived there. And I asked her one day when we were talking, hey, you know, where do you live? And she said, I live on the east side. And she said, where do you live? And I said, I live in Fire Mountain. And some of you guys know where Fire Mountain is? And she said, oh, my husband and I wanted to buy a house in Fire Mountain, but they told us we couldn't.
[00:05:17] And I said, what are you talking about, Lillian? Who told you you couldn't buy a house in Fire Mountain? She said, oh, well, you know, this is the 1950s, and they wouldn't loan money to black people to buy homes in that neighborhood. And I was like, it is so sad how mistaken this old woman is, because that's just the craziest thing I've ever heard. That can't Be true.
[00:05:39] This is back in like 2008.
[00:05:41] And of course it is true. It was true. And many of you know that this is the story of redlining. Their redlining was policy in the United States for decades in order to keep black and brown and poor people in certain neighborhoods. And those neighborhoods were color coded. And insurance companies wouldn't insure mortgages that were know, made to black and brown people if they wanted to buy in those neighborhoods. And CC&Rs wouldn't allow them, and home, you know, real estate agents wouldn't sell homes to them anyway, all of that to say Lillian was a powerful force in my own education, my own awakening, and have always been grateful to Lillian for that. And recently had the gift to see Lillian at an event at her church, which is St. John's here in Oceanside over in Eastside. Our church often partners with them for local Advent advocacy issues. They're a historic black congregation. It's important to us to partner with churches of color.
[00:06:40] And so I got to see Lillian there. She's quite a bit older now, and Janelle was there. And I told Janelle, I have to go say hi to Lillian. I have to thank her for shaping me in this way. And so I went and I told her the story, and I told her how important that was to me. And she was very sweet and very kind.
[00:07:03] And I said, lillian, how do you keep going in the midst of these kinds of historic, systemic oppressions that we seem to be coming back to?
[00:07:18] And she said, I can't remember exactly what she said, so forgive me, but essentially what she said was, oh, this is nothing new.
[00:07:32] And isn't it funny how that's oddly comforting, like it should be so discouraging to hear this is nothing new. And it is, of course, discouraging. It's discouraging that when it feels like our society is making progress toward the recognition of rights and goods and services for people who are black or brown or women or queer, that in the face of feeling like we've made a bit of progress, that we now seem to be regressing into fear, that is discouraging. But on the other hand, it's also oddly encouraging to hear from people who have been in the trenches for so long, who have been through hell and back and can still say hallelujah to learn from that, to learn that there's a hallelujah in the midst of the struggle.
[00:08:31] Okay, so that's the sermon, and I wish that was it, but it's not.
[00:08:37] It's not even on my notes. So the story is this, Exodus chapter 32, verses 7 through 14.
[00:08:47] And says, the Lord said to Moses, go down at once. All right, backstory, Moses is on Mount Sinai, top of the mountain, where he receives the ten Commandments right from God. And there's smoke. And it's this, you know, mystical experience. God and Moses together. MF E O, right, like really into each other apparently. And then the Lord said, and then prior to this, just before this, because Moses is up on the mountain too long, Aaron and the rest of the Hebrews get anxious and antsy and they think that Moses is probably dead on the top of the mountain somewhere. And so they decide to make a golden calf because they need a God to worship. And so they sort of hearken back to their old days in Egypt. They're afraid, they don't know what to do. They make a golden calf. And verse seven, the Lord said to Moses, go down at once. Your people, your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely. They've been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them. They've cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. In other words, God's not getting the credit God is due.
[00:09:55] God's people are worshiping the wrong thing. They're loving the wrong thing, they're idolizing the wrong thing.
[00:10:04] And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, how stiff necked they are. This is the part in my Bible that's highlighted.
[00:10:12] Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation. Right? In other words, God is done. God's had enough. He's done with these stiff necked, difficult, disobedient people. God is saying, that's it. Leave me alone to be angry and to sulk, and then to smite every one of them. You, you and I will go and we'll find a new people. We'll do this all over again. We'll start over from scratch.
[00:10:44] But verse 11, Moses implored the Lord, his God and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people?
[00:10:59] Why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth turn from your fierce wrath.
[00:11:19] Change your mind and do not remember or do not bring disaster on your people.
[00:11:25] Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven. And all this land that I promised you will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.
[00:11:43] This is the second highlighted part in my Bible. And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring his people.
[00:11:53] I, I love this passage for so many reasons, but not the least of which be is because Moses wrestles with God over, you know, this struggle and pulls out all the stops. Like, you know, God says to Moses, look what your people have done. And Moses is like, no, no, no. These are your people. Remember, you're the one who, with your great power, brought them out of Egypt. You're the one who made promises to them. You're the one who said that this is what you would do. In fact, your promises go back to Abraham and Isaac and Israel. And do you really want to be slandered by the Egyptians who will definitely later on say, see, you know, their God tricked them. Them.
[00:12:34] Moses pulls out all the stops in order to convince God not to destroy God's own people. What in the world is going on in this passage?
[00:12:45] If we just take this passage at face value, it's a, it's a very difficult thing for anybody who was raised in a tradition, a, A, a religious tradition that says that every passage in scripture reveals who God really is, but who God really appears to be in this is somebody who's really angry, has a sort of difficulty regulating his own emotions, and as a result, is going to slaughter an entire group of people.
[00:13:19] Theologians, of course, have wrestled with this passage for literally 2,000 years. And before that, of course, Jewish people have wrestled with this passage for even longer. This is Hebrew scripture, after all.
[00:13:33] Many theologians would read this passage and say, well, perhaps God is testing Moses. That's what's going on here. God really doesn't have any intention of slaughtering all these people. God is just the kind of God who tests to see if you will respond well to the test. And I suppose that's a possibility.
[00:13:51] We definitely read the old story of Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac as a kind of test. We certainly think about Jesus wandering in the wilderness as a kind of test. The text seems to indicate that that sort of thing may happen on occasion. But it doesn't make me feel a whole lot better about God that there might be a God who's willing to test us in such cruel and difficult ways.
[00:14:18] Other theologians might respond out of that same concern and say, well, this isn't really God in the text. This is Moses's projection of his own anger. The God that Moses thinks that God that he is hearing is really just a projection of his own, like, frustration with the people at the bottom of the mountain, his own fears, his own concerns, his own desires, that they would be wiped out.
[00:14:42] Can I please just be done with these people?
[00:14:47] Or it's possible.
[00:14:50] Many theologians would remind us that the text is pretty straightforward.
[00:14:55] It's possible that God actually changed God's mind, that Moses brought a compelling argument that God wrestled with God's own frustration and fear and anger about what this meant.
[00:15:16] I think, for whatever it's worth, I think that these theological lines of reasoning are an easy escape from the real power of this passage.
[00:15:32] I think that when people want to avoid wrestling with what really is confronted in us by the text, we escape to abstract lines of thought about who God really is and wonder what the text could mean and have endless, sometimes centuries long arguments that involve fairly tortured abstract reasoning, philosophical conjecture, all of which is utterly speculative, which is fun. Don't get me wrong.
[00:16:06] Those conversations are fun and interesting and sometimes even a little bit helpful.
[00:16:13] But I think that the real power in this story personally, is that Moses wrestles with God.
[00:16:25] One of my colleagues in San Diego, Rabbi Devorah Marcus, who is the head rabbi at Temple Emanuel in San Diego, was once a part of an event that we were doing that our church was involved in because of our partnership with the San Diego Organizing Project. And we were protesting a certain policy that had been passed in San Diego. This is several years back. And I remember standing by as she stood in front of a news and was talking about why it was important to protest against this particular unjust policy. And she said, Moses is considered the greatest prophet in all of Judaism because he had the guts to disobey God.
[00:17:11] And I was like, wow, you guys have to understand, like, I was raised in an obedience factory. That's not what my church was officially called, but it might as well have been.
[00:17:27] Entire swaths of the Christian tradition exist for the purpose of reproducing little automatons, robots who will do what whatever authority tells them to do at any given time. And so of course, we grow up to read that that is exactly what the Bible is supposed to be. It's supposed to be something that reveals God's will, so that we will blindly, unquestioningly obey it.
[00:17:53] And of course that is true. Many traditions do exist for that exact reason. They desperately want to mold and form and shape you to be people who will obey authority. Because that makes my job so much easier.
[00:18:08] What I love about this church is that my job is not easy.
[00:18:21] What if. What if?
[00:18:24] What if Rabbi Marcus is right? That Christianity, that Judaism, that the best of religion is not meant to be an obedience factory, that religion is meant to be a tradition that teaches us to wrestle with authority?
[00:18:43] Maybe the reason why there's a story in the Bible where one man, one man who can't string together a coherent sentence, one man who was guilty of murder and was driven into the wilderness, one man who had to leave his own ethnicity behind because he was so full of shame and guilt and fear, one man like that was willing to stand on the top of a mountain and say no to God.
[00:19:09] What if those stories are in here to teach us not to either be obedient or disobedient, but to teach us to be people who know the difference, who know when it's right to say yes and when it's right to say no?
[00:19:27] To be formed and shaped into people of depth and character, who have learned from these narratives that there is such a thing as what is good and right and true.
[00:19:40] And that our utter conviction, our utter worship of what is good and right and true gives us the ability to say no to power.
[00:19:50] What if that's the point?
[00:19:54] What if the life of faith is not supposed to be a life of blind obedience to God? This would help us make sense of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32 at the foot of the ladder that descends from heaven, who is then injured by wrestling with God, but then blessed? For it might help us make sense of prophets like Elijah who come in from the wilderness and castigate and exhort the kings and the priests to leave their foolishness behind and instead return to worship of what is genuinely good and right and true. It might help us make sense of a Jesus who comes along and rebukes the powers that be, who turns over the tables in the temple and says, none of this is how it was ever meant to be.
[00:20:44] This book, if we're willing to read it and just take it at face value, is full of disobedient prophets.
[00:20:54] Perhaps we can learn something from them.
[00:21:00] What if the life of faith is not a life of either being disobedient or obedient blindly one way or the other? What if the life of faith is not a life of endlessly pontificating about the abstract possibilities of theology and how we might be approved by a church or a denomination or a tradition who is impressed with our ability to regurgitate doctrinal points of belief? What if the life of faith is a life of becoming a person who has the courage to stand against authority when it's right?
[00:21:43] I just stand with it when that's what's right.
[00:21:49] But to be independent from that authority.
[00:21:55] Life is, I think, not about abstract conversations about theology. It is mainly driven by painful and oppressive circumstances that we must respond to with courage.
[00:22:10] And I think that's the first thing that I notice from the greatest prophet in Judaism, is that the prophetic imagination, I think, is many things and will visit this.
[00:22:22] Myself and Claire and Janelle and Larry and others who preach in this series will visit what the prophetic imagination is and what it looks like. But today, what I want to suggest to you is that the prophetic imagination is a courageous imagination that, like Moses, it faces the anger and oppression and violence that comes from fear and it imagines something better.
[00:22:54] Can you imagine that when you're faced with somebody's expression of anger and fear and violence?
[00:23:08] Can you imagine a better alternative to all of that bluster?
[00:23:16] Can you imagine a better alternative to all of the authority and power and might that stands behind that?
[00:23:27] Are you willing to wrestle with it?
[00:23:31] And I think that does take real courage.
[00:23:34] I'm not even willing to wrestle with people on Facebook these days.
[00:23:42] Am I willing to say to the mayor of Oceanside that she has to stand with certain policies in order to be a beacon for the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized in this community?
[00:24:03] Probably.
[00:24:06] Do I have the courage, the imagination, to face a bigoted family member across the table at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and say, no, that's not my experience of women or the queer community or the black community or immigrants.
[00:24:28] Sometimes I'd rather face the mayor, to be honest with you.
[00:24:35] Do I have the courage to face my own bigotry and biases when they're pointed out to me most of the time? No.
[00:24:56] Three things that I I'm taking heart in this week, three things that I think help us to have that kind of courage. The first is this, that as Christians and this is a Christian church, for better or for worse, as Christians, in this debate, this debate that's in Scripture, this debate that we find running throughout it, the debate between whether or not God demands obedience or God wants to form us for disobedience, the debate about whether, or not, you know, the priests and the kings are right or the Prophets are right. The debate about whether or not, you know, God sides with the rich or with the poor, like this debate, runs throughout Hebrew scriptures, and I think that's a good thing.
[00:25:44] But in that debate, Jesus takes sides.
[00:25:49] Luke 4 tells us that Jesus Gospel is that the good news is relief for the poor, healing for the sick, liberation for the oppressed. And because I'm a Christian, I side with Jesus.
[00:26:01] And so in every circumstance, when faced with whatever authority I'm faced with, on the top of whatever mountain I'm standing, like Moses, my plan is to say no.
[00:26:15] When whatever authority, governmental or otherwise, tells me that immigrants should be uprooted from their communities and kicked out of this country indiscriminately, that women should take a backseat to men in anything, that queer people should be erased from this earth, that trans people somehow represent a threat to the United States. Absolutely not.
[00:26:47] Thank you for that, because you're making my next point.
[00:26:51] I take comfort in knowing that this is where Jesus stands, and I stand with Christ because I'm a Christian.
[00:26:59] The second thing that gives me hope is that we don't do this alone.
[00:27:05] We do this together.
[00:27:09] I will go see the mayor alone. I will go to Oceanside Unified School District board meetings alone if I have to, and speak out on behalf of trans people. But here's what's great. I know I don't have to, because many of you have shown up for those things, and I know many of you will.
[00:27:34] And I think that is a reflection. This is where I get a little theological again, so bear with me. I think that withness that I take heart in is a reflection of the fact that Moses wasn't alone either on the top of that mountain.
[00:27:51] God was with Moses in the wrestling. God was with Moses in the contention. God was with Moses in the argument.
[00:28:06] There's a new season of our podcast coming out. I think it's this week. Does it drop this week? Tomorrow. And we begin this season by interviewing one of my favorite theologians, Wilda Gaffney, who's an Episcopal preacher and a Hebrew scholar. And in it, you'll hear this if you listen to the podcast. There are two episodes featuring her. And in it, she says that what she takes away from the text above all else is this idea of God as Emmanuel, God with us.
[00:28:40] And while it's true that Moses wrestles with God, it's also true that God is with Moses in the wrestling.
[00:28:49] God is a relational God and wants us to wrestle, wants us to contend.
[00:28:59] Isn't that part of what it means to love Somebody to be willing to wrestle with them, willing to contend, willing to say, no, this is what I think.
[00:29:09] And also willing to listen.
[00:29:13] That same God that is with Moses is willing to listen and change his mind.
[00:29:21] That is profoundly good news.
[00:29:28] So we don't do this alone.
[00:29:30] We do this together, and we do this, I think, with God, or maybe God does this with us.
[00:29:40] Number three. And this is sort of in this text. But later, Tina will admonish me for taking liberties with the text.
[00:29:51] Number three. I take heart in this. Love wins in the end.
[00:29:59] In the end, Moses won this argument.
[00:30:07] An entire group of people, an entire ethnicity was not obliterated.
[00:30:14] Moses loved those people and fought for them, and God relented.
[00:30:23] So fear and anger and violence, these things are self defeating.
[00:30:29] The fear and anger and the violence that flows from the White House, the fear and the anger and the violence that flows from any official in the Trump administration who wants to demonize and vilify groups of people who are simply trying to survive.
[00:30:48] All of that fear and violence will eventually destroy itself.
[00:30:54] A lot of people will get hurt in the process.
[00:30:57] A lot of people are going to suffer in the process.
[00:31:01] And for that, we need to show up.
[00:31:04] But in the end, fear and violence defeats itself.
[00:31:11] This, by the way, is another thing that we learn from the black community, another thing that we learned from the black church tradition in the United States, that creating safe spaces and persevering in love will deliver you in the end.
[00:31:34] Martin Luther King, Jr. Who is a product of the black church tradition in the United States, said this, and I'll just leave you with this quote. There are two types of laws, just unjust. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
[00:31:53] But one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Amen. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you again for today, this opportunity for us to come together and to be challenged and stretched and encouraged by these words, by this text.
[00:32:15] And we want to say collectively today that we are thankful for these words. We are grateful for this story that teaches us that authority, whenever it is unjust, can be resisted and should be resisted, and that the tradition that teaches us what is good and right and true will ultimately persevere.
[00:32:47] We believe that we have faith that love and care and concern, that the gospel that is good news for the poor, the sick and the oppressed will prevail.
[00:33:05] We ask that you would give us the courage to believe that in Jesus name, amen.
[00:33:22] Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching. No matter when or where you're tuning in. To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
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